There was no use in sugarcoating it. I summarized my conversation with Kira as well as possible, including the most important detail - her support for the Starsnatchers.

Rather than electrocuting me at the spot, Crick analyzed the situation with barely restrained anger. They concluded that Kira likely had allies here and that we should find them. Maybe they were easier to interrogate. Kira didn't know about the tracking chip we had implanted in her singularity stone, so, following her might have been a valid strategy to find her allies.

Incredibly far-fetched, if you asked me, but better than returning home with empty hands.

Crick drove us all across the mountainside, not transmitting a word to me during the trip.

Not that I cared. My thoughts were on Kira and Kira alone, as much as I tried to forget about her. In retrospect, I might have been too hard on her.

She didn't lie to us. She was brutally honest about whose side she was on. She could have lied to me, told me what I wanted to hear, or told me what was necessary to lure me into a trap.

How did I mess up our conversation so hard? Was it just my usual social awkwardness or was it more than that? Talking to her wasn't like talking to Crick and Helix.

I approached her with expectations. Unlike those Seizers, she understood me. She knew what I went through. I could have talked to her and she'd have understood.

She could be in this car with me. Yes, it's cramped, but I need as much protection from Crick as possible.

"We received news from home," Crick transmitted. "An enemy starship destroyed a space elevator. It is now whipping around uncontrollably, killing thousands."

They left the obvious unspoken. We could be winning right now, had you succeeded, Human.

Could be worse, I told myself. The Firefly Rover could be following us.

We drove near a lake. The waterhole rested near the mountain's foot where the grasslands and woods were within a walking distance.

Terrapods towered over the plains, giving the scenery Jurassic-Park-esque vibes. What was the treeline like before these huge plant-eaters came?

Between their massive bodies, trees disconnected from the forest dotted the landscape and provided shadow for the smaller animals. Their roots reached so deep that I wondered if they connected underground like the roots of fungi did.

Around the waterhole drank snake-like beings whose ribbon-shaped scales grew out of their torsos like leaves. For me, it was hard to determine if they were animals at all or just plants who had learned to creep. Those who didn't drink had their leaves erect and tanked sunlight.

Amidst those bizarre creatures stood the occasional bipedal herbivore with either horns or disks for a head.

Our vehicle slowed down.

"So, this is where this Kira is?" Helix asked.

"I did not say I was trying to track her down immediately," Crick transmitted.

The woods rustled. Grazing so close to the main forest never failed to be a gamble. Building-sized trees could even hide carnivores large enough to prey on Terrapods.

A predator stepped out, its size and general posture resembling a Tyrannosaurus rex - only that it had no forelimbs at all rather than tiny ones. Unlike with the Terrapods, its head and tail were clearly distinct, confirming my suspicions that this feature evolved as an anti-predation measure.

Ultimately, the predator failed to kill anyone in this alien dinosaur fight. Crick took notes during all of its movements. As interesting as all this was, what was the point of watching?

"So, this is where this Kira is?" Helix repeated.

Crick typed animatedly on their terminal. "I do not know. I lost track. The AI I had tracked must have reacted to its true owner's presence and improved its computation capacities. Using nanobots, it destroyed my tracking chip and left me without a way to locate our target."

I sank into my airbag seat. Had this car been larger and less cramped, I might have stood up and hit something.

"So, we're wasting our time so that you can watch cool alien dinosaur fights?" I asked.

"Essentially."

I glanced over my shoulder. Helix flared so brightly, I might have confused them with Crick if not for their proportions.

"You lied to us" Helix transmitted. You never tried to track her down, you just wanted an excuse to do some exobiology!"

"I must confess that I need time for my plans. We cannot spy on her effectively, so I must be creative."

"I presume you already had to get creative when you wanted to shoot our only information source."

Ouch. Helix had stronger opinions on Kira than I thought.

"I am serious about this situation," Crick transmitted. "We are woefully unequipped for it. According to our drones, we might have to deal with the Rover soon, too."

"Call in supplies!" Helix transmitted.

"What supplies? Our ship is damaged and busy fighting anyone and anything who attacks our landing rocket! It is only due to mutually assured destruction that we are not fighting more!"

"Mutually assured destruction" referred to our policy concerning the Firefly. Speaking of it, didn't Crick imply that its Rover was after us?

As if they hadn't made their point already, Crick turned on our video screen. Around Shadowmoon, space elevators broke like matchsticks and antimatter factories popped like balloons. Starsnatcher ships controlled our wormhole, shooting any Seizer cavalry trying to get through.

Of those few that remained around Eden, the bulk focused on Starsnatcher itself. Starsnatcher still orbited that space station around Eden, informing their allies about what they learned from my spy work.

I peeked over my shoulder again and Helix was silent; their skin colorless and their mindwaves neutral.

"Besides, supplies would take time to arrive," Crick transmitted. "Time I could use to do exobiology."

Helix let more venom seep into their mindwaves this time. "I can't believe how you are putting your petty interests before the mission!"

"Do you have a better plan?"

"No, but this is not my duty. Unlike you, I know what mine is."

"Destruction is imminent," Crick transmitted, their tone calm. "Reports of casualties amass. We cannot win. Before that, the only reason I did not succumb to the addiction of virtual reality was my calling as a scientist. For all those centuries, I wanted to get on a space expedition, to witness life that shares no common ancestor with my race. Only this keeps me alive."

A Terrapod roared in the background. Swarms of flying animals rose from rock to make space for the giant. Incredible how quiet nature sounded without the familiar chirping birds. The Terrapod's distant footsteps drowned out all other sounds.

Most silent, however, was Helix.

"I believe I can understand you," I told Crick. "I'm here for a reason, too."

I gave up my only chance to get home to save you. Don't let it be in vain!

"We all need to do things that give us peace of mind," I continued. "I fiddle with my hands. Some people on my planet drink coffee. You study animals. Take your time, Crick."

"Thanks," Crick responded, "but understand that I do not require counseling, especially not from someone younger and less sophisticated than me."

"You're wrong. I suck at social clues, but from the way you talked, I figured you out. You're like my former boss. You have a high opinion of yourself and when you can't live up to it, you lose it. Especially in your type of society, where everyone is equal, I imagine that having an own identity must be important."

Crick blinked.

"That's nothing to be ashamed of. I used to be like that, too. I used to put myself in danger, to get myself abducted and sent to your world just for money and excitement."

"I appreciate that you try to help, but I fear you don't understand the situation," Helix cut in. "This has actual stakes."

"I know, it's just the general principle. Even in such situations, we have expectations we must live up to."

I kept my personal self-expectations unstated. After each of my blunders, I tried to do something right. After my abduction, I wanted to go home and become famous. After the disaster with Sye, I wanted to save their world. Now that this had failed, too, all that remained was steering Crick on the right path.

None of the two replied.

"Maybe Crick will regain strength and then do something relevant, like studying our Kira's samples," I continued. "And Helix, didn't you tell me during my training that it was self-destructive to push myself as hard as I did? That I needed a break from time to time?"

"I think I implied that," Helix transmitted. "All right, I will grant Professor its time and quiet."

I slumped into my seat again, removing the tension out of my back and preparing my mind to sleep. No more mindwaves meant quiet time for me, too.

No idea what the two did behind my back. Crick either continued their research or finally started thinking up a new plan.

You might think of this situation as boring or hopeless for me, yet oddly, it was the opposite. It was relishing.

After all these weeks of being their hopeless zoo animal, all these weeks of them knowing everything better than me, it was beautiful to see Crick stumble. Beautiful that I wasn't the only person in the world making mistakes.

Moreover, it was empowering. If Crick got out of their hole, maybe I could do so, too.

Eventually, the animals left and the Sun set. Days on this planet were so long, especially after I got used to Shadowmoon. I had gotten enough sleep that I wasn't tired when all went dark.

Our blinking machines lit up the starless night like fireflies. It would have been comforting, had it not felt like a target painted on our backs. The silver moon broke through the cloud cover, its face as large and majestic as a gas giant.

"I have a plan now," Crick transmitted. "Here are the results of carefully studying our drone records."

The screen depicted the mountainside at night. Dark woods crawled over its titanic rock face, obscured under the evening fog. It wasn't easy to tell where the mist stopped and where the cloud cover began. The moonlight illuminated rifts that shimmered on the mountain's back like scars.

I could have lost myself in the scenery had Crick not played with the screen. In light blue, they highlighted a straight river flowing downslope.

"Are we becoming this desperate?" Helix asked.

"Quiet!" Crick transmitted. "Watch carefully!"

Crick played with the river line's coloration. Its upper section was bright and prominent like a neon line. Further downslope, the line became fainter and thinner until it looked like a blue crayon drawing.

"Are you telling us that the river becomes thinner and drier the further it flows downstream?" I asked.

"Indeed," Crick replied. "The depiction is exaggerated. In reality, the drying is more subtle which is why it took me so long to notice. Do you have any idea why this might be?"

Rhetorical question. No way Crick was asking me questions they didn't know the answer to.

With further blue lines, they highlighted similar rivers on the same mountain slope. Despite being subject to the same environmental conditions, those other rivers all meandered and gained rather than lost water.

"One of the greatest flaws in my straight-river-channel hypothesis was why one would build a channel and then not use it," Crick transmitted. "There are no visible alien settlements around the channel. Its loss in water volume might be the key to the answer though.

"Rivers can be divided into influent and effluent streams. Normal, effluent streams increase in water volume since they gain water from the local groundwater. Influent streams, however, lose water to the local aquifer."

"Wait, does that mean whoever needs the water needs it underground?" I asked.

"Positive."

There was intelligent life on Eden after all, only that they hid in underground cities.

"Something else," Crick transmitted.

The camera zoomed away from the mountainous channel onto the nearby forest plains. A clearing stuck out of the woods like a wound. A naive observer might have dismissed it as another product of the Terrapods' hunger. Zooming in revealed a far more sinister reality, however.

It wasn't covered in grass like the other clearings. Dead, rotting trees and ferns as well as the occasional alien corpse were all that grew on its soil. Amidst this wasteland lay a spherical metal construct.

"This the dropship we have been searching for," Crick explained. "It is of the same type as the one in which Human came to us."

In other words, the clearing was where Kira entered Eden.

This was it. We might have lost Kira, but we found a new lead.

I really should have watched these detective dramas my Dad always followed more often. In them, the detectives always ran out of clues eventually and despaired, only to solve the mystery anyway. Of course, real life wasn't like television, but it was good to remember that even the greatest heroes had to face failure.

With Kira's dropship and an alien underground city, there was no way we'd run out of leads again.

Our car kicked into motion.